A Haunting: The Investigation

My initial investigation of the strange happenings in my home was totally amateur, but I managed to come up with some evidence, including recordings of Electronic Voice Phenomena I mentioned in my last post. One bit of sound recorded under my son’s bed sounded like carousel music.

As I investigated the history of my home and my neighborhood, I discovered that my house is just two blocks from where the fairgrounds stood until 1967. As a matter of fact, the fairgrounds stood in this neighborhood for almost fifty years before my little house was even built.

Fargo Fairgrounds Grandstand, 1908

The whole area is re-developed now and home to Fargo North High School and some strip malls, but, as a kid who grew up smelling the smells and hearing the sounds of the North Dakota State Fair about six blocks from my house in Minot, I’m pretty sure this fairground in Fargo once filled the air of my neighborhood with carousel music accompanied by the laughter of children. What the connection would be to my house, I have no idea — it’s one hundred percent speculation, but it seemed like an uncanny coincidence.

I decided this was a job for the professionals, so in the spring of 2008, FM Paranormal staged an investigation of our home. Charles and Shawn from FM Paranormal assembled a crew of four and spent a night in our house. The investigation itself was fairly uneventful and, to my recollection, nothing out of the ordinary occurred. It was only upon examination of the recordings that the FM Paranormal guys uncovered apparent voices from beyond.

Charles and Shawn came to our studio one morning to announce their results. They were in the studio with us awaiting the end of a segment for about ten minutes before we went on the air, and we chatted for a bit over coffee. We opened our microphones to start our segment, and within one minute, our transmitter went off the air.

Listen to that, and the rest of the reveal below, broadcast on Y94 in Fargo when I was a morning host there. This recording includes all of the EVP (electronic voice phenomena) sounds captured in the house during their investigation. It’s about fourteen minutes long. Turn out the lights and turn up the volume.

For reference, the three members of this show are myself as the host, Megan, a talented Fargo announcer who has since moved on to another radio position, and Rat, also known as Terry Hinnenkamp, my co-author and photographer for the Ghosts of North Dakota series of coffee table books. He is still on this radio show today.

FM Paranormal’s verdict:“We believe there is enough evidence to call Troy’s house haunted. There seems to be both intelligent and residual hauntings here.” You can get the take, straight from FM Paranormal by visiting my case page at their website.

I find myself apologizing again because the video and photo evidence you hear them referencing in the audio above has been lost over the years due to a) poor filing on my part and b) the suspension of my old YouTube account (because radio deejays like to use popular music in their promotional videos) at a time when YouTube would just delete your entire account for copyright infringement. I really wish I still had the videos because they were compelling.

At any rate, I’m not trying to convince anyone, rather, attempting to tell this story in a straight-forward manner, as credibly as possible, in a way that leaves you entertained. These things happened.

So, what’s the conclusion then? What happens next? I wish I could tell you there was a big Hollywood ending on this story — that we discovered a cemetery under our house, or that someone who met an untimely end had unfinished business and was trying to communicate with us. I’m afraid I don’t have that kind of an ending to this story.

Would it intrigue you to know we still live in this house? Or that the activity we experienced has never entirely gone away?

In the next chapter, I’ll try to wrap it all up with as much clarity as I can.

This brings back a great memory and puts a smile on my face while reading it. Just thinking of you, Rat, Shawn, and myself sitting in the living room asking questions and having a good time. The evidence blew me away when I listened to it though.

Jennifer
September 27, 2014 at 8:31 am

Thanks for sharing your family’s experience and sharing your findings. We have had many experiences with spirits and entities and love to research and discover history . As I have found out over the years, children/pets are often the first to notice any spiritual activity or have communication. We now live in a 100+ year home west of Fargo and have a room that makes any man that enters it feel uncomfortable, at least one rambunctious child spirit in our home, as well as a more sinister one that lurks around from time to time. The room previously mentioned above was the girl’s room when the house was first built and remained that way until 5 years ago. The last girl of the former family is now in her 80’s and the room was kept just as she left it over 60 years ago. To ease the troubled energy, I have made that my office and is off limits once again to any male spending a considerable amount of time in it. Fortunately, we have a book of the family history that shows documented notes from the previous inhabitants of our home and their encounters with the odd occurrences that dates back to the early 1900’s. We purchased another 100+ year old house for rental property about 1/2 mile from our home and we were soon notified of electronic disturbances, as well as their newborn daughter’s toys turning on. Through cameras and voice recorders, we were able to see orbs of light over the baby on several occasions. As the baby grew older, they (the orbs) calmed the child and she seemed to interact with them, laughing and clapping. Footsteps are heard going back and forth between both children’s rooms when the children are sleeping and the parents are downstairs. Through research we discovered that the home was formerly owned by a couple who desperately tried having children to no avail. The current family still lives there cohesively living with the “old” family. As a side note; I have worked with other families that have had sinister spirits that began innocently interacting with children that did not end in a good outcome. Just as with the living, it takes time to get to know someone’s true intention.